THE Tibetan capital Lhasa erupted in deadly violence today as security forces used gunfire to quell the biggest protests against Chinese rule in two decades, officials and rights groups said.

The protests, which spread outside Tibet into other areas of China, came amid a growing international campaign by Tibetans to challenge Beijing's rule of the Himalayan region ahead of the Olympic Games in August.

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China accused followers of the Dalai Lama of "masterminding" the uprising, which shatters its carefully-cultivated image of national harmony in the build-up to the Beijing Olympic Games.

Angry crowds in the remote mountain city on Friday attacked government offices, burned vehicles and shops and threw stones at police in bloody confrontations that left many injured, according to Chinese state media reports.

China has said that Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, engineered what were the biggest protests in disputed region since 1989, a claim he quickly denied.

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Oh yeah blame the bald guy.

"We are fully capable of maintaining the social stability of Tibet," the Xinhua news agency quoted an official as saying in a statement repeated across Chinese state media on Saturday.